In Senate, Amnesty Tops List of Divisive Issues

Sen. John McCain laughed at his own answer to the question: What are the hang-ups to negotiating an immigration bill?

"Border security, guest worker program, disposal of the 12 million" undocumented workers, the Arizona Republican said. "Those are the three major sticking points."

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In other words, just about everything.

Immigration reform should be a layup this year, with President Bush and the Democratic-controlled Congress largely in sync on the issue. But despite Washington's new political contours, the seeds of a divisive and potentially unproductive debate are once again taking root.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) is writing a bill with McCain, which they would like to unveil next week, but they are struggling to agree on the biggest provisions.

Other Republican senators have been meeting privately to craft a position that can hold together an opposition bloc large enough to thwart any bill, but they don't know yet what it might be.

And interest groups on all sides are fighting along the same fault lines that derailed the bill last year -- most contentiously, the definition of amnesty, which, like beauty, appears to be in the eye of the beholder.

Immigrant advocates hope to gain the upper hand in the debate this time around by dispelling the notion that they favor a free citizenship ticket for 12 million illegal immigrants. Yet, a vocal slice of Congress and the public remain adamant: Anything short of deportation is amnesty.

"The question on the table is: How do you fashion a program where the people who are already here come out of shadows, but you do it properly and it doesn't get labeled amnesty and drain votes?" said Frank Sharry, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an immigrant advocacy group that has advised Kennedy.

"The idea is to make people jump through hoops," Sharry said. "The question then becomes: Is that going to be good enough to get Republicans to vote for it?"

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told reporters this week that for some Republicans, there can be no compromise.

"One of the things that would really help is if the president admitted that his earned citizenship is really amnesty," Grassley said. "When you reward illegality, you get more of it. So, President Mary Smith 20 years from now will be proposing more amnesty, only instead of amnesty for 12 million people, it will be for 30 million people."

The Senate passed a bipartisan immigration bill last year, but it stalled in the House under strong opposition from Republicans, worried about border security. The Senate will take up the issue first again this year.

And this year, like last, the traditional battle lines aren't clear.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is working with labor unions. Some House and Senate Democratic freshmen ran to the right of Republicans on immigration last year, raising the question of where they might come down in the debate.

And most noteworthy, the president is on the side of the Democratic congressional leadership, which pledged to pass a comprehensive bill this year.

"We will take up the bill before the August recess," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday at a Capitol event organized by the New Democratic Network, a Democratic advocacy group. "Once we get on the bill, we will complete the bill."

Democrats hold a 51 to 49 majority, but they need 60 votes to stave off a filibuster -- and they are leaning heavily on Bush to deliver Republicans.

"Unless we have the president actively on board, we have no way of getting to 61 votes," said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). "It is really in his ballpark."

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which opposes giving legal status to illegal immigrants, said the Democrats will use Bush as cover: If the bill fails, blame him.

"If Patrick Leahy thought this was politically popular, he wouldn't want to share the platform with President Bush," Mehlman said. "Here you have the most unpopular president in living memory and they want to send him out to push it."

Kennedy and McCain -- along with Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.) in the House -- expect to finalize their proposal by next week. The Senate GOP leadership will then decide whether to offer a counterproposal, aides said.

The Kennedy-led bill will be similar to last year's, according to those involved in the negotiations.

-- Millions of undocumented workers could get legal status, after they pay a penalty, work solidly for several years, pay back taxes, learn English and pass a criminal background check. Then, they can get in the back of the line.

-- Hundreds of thousands of other foreign workers could gain temporary visas to work here in the future.

-- A mandatory employee verification system would allow companies to check whether they are hiring legal workers. And companies that hire illegal workers would face tougher penalties.

-- More security would be placed along the borders and in the interior parts of the country.

A provision that might go missing in this year's bill is the three-tiered approach to citizenship, which allowed undocumented immigrants who have been in the country the longest to take the quickest path to legalization. But that proposal, which was inserted to bring some Republicans on board last year, has since been criticized as unworkable.

Despite the sharp rhetoric on both sides, there's recognition that the issue must be addressed -- it's a matter of how to do it.

"We learned from the election that this problem doesn't go away by ignoring it," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.). "From the Republican point of view, it is good for us to get it behind us. From the Democratic point of view, it is good to solve it on their watch. From the president's legacy point of view, it would be good.